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Damascus, Syria – The death toll among journalists and media workers in Syria has risen to 257 since the start of the three-year-and-half war in the country, the Syrian Journalists Association (SJA) reported on Sunday.

The SJA documented hundreds of violations against media activists and journalists in Syria.

Among the cases was the death of media activist Atallah Bahbouh, after being injured by shrapnel in Daraa city in Syria’s south, and the death of media activist Mohamed Nur Idris as a result of shrapnel from a barrel bomb in the city of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib, northern Syria.

The association also reported the British journalist John Kintela, who was detained by extremists of the Islamic State (IS/ISIS).

Independent media centers in the city of Aleppo were also exposed to attacks by gunmen weeks ago, causing casualties among activists there.

The SJA also reported incidents in neighboring Turkey against Syrian journalists, sorting them as “individual cases”.

Meanwhile, al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda branch in Syria) was also accused of attacking media activists in several areas of Syria, such as the case of media activist Jawdat Malas who was arrested by Nusra militants in the city of Maarat al-human in Idlib province, and his fate is still unknown.

The Syrian Union of Free Media, on the other hand, reported that the Turkish authorities arrested 18 Syrian Kurdish media workers in the Turkish city of Kor last September. “Some of whom were accused of involvement in violence, which is untrue,” the group said.

The union’s report also pointed to the arrest of the media activist Walid al-Qasim, correspondent of Aleppo News Network, in Haritan town of Aleppo countryside without any information about his whereabouts.

The report also mentioned the case of Adnan Ali, an editor in the Arabic section of the Turkish channel TRT and member of the Syrian Journalists Association, saying he was beaten with his fellow worker Jaber Sayadi in the Turkish city of Gaziantep on October 22.

Speaking to ARA News, journalist and human rights’ activist Nasser Abdullah said: “There are many undocumented violations against journalists who work on covering developments in Syria, which raise the question of the efficacy of media organizations concerned with violations’ documentation.”

“We need more specialized documentation centers to shed the light on all kinds of violations against media activists and journalists,” Abdullah said